The father of Operation Flood, Varghese Kurien, has announced his retirement as chairman of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) located at Anand in Gujarat.
This brings to an end to the 77-year old Kurien's 33-year association with the board.
Kurien pioneered the white revolution in India when NDDB began replicating the Anand-pattern of milk co-operatives in the late sixties. He had a 50-year association with the milk co-operative movement in India. India is today the largest milk producing country in the world. NDDB has played a pivotal role in this. Milk produced by millions of poor milk producers in lakhs of villages has been channelled to modern processing plants through producer-owned dairy co-operatives.
NDDB continues to play a pivotal role in the dairy development of the country. There are 10 million milk producer families organised into 75,000 village co-operatives owning 170 modern co-operative dairy plants.
